Question from Allison
I have been seeing some sites promoting the use of copper water bottles as the next best metal. They are claiming that is has antimicrobal qualities. It has been understanding that copper in food storage is not ideal, it being a heavy metal. However, many water pipes are copper. Can you help clear up the confusion? Thank you so much!
Debra’s Answer
This is not an easy thing to clear up.
Many years ago, I went to a nutritionist who told me I had a copper imbalance in my body. She treated me for it, and my symptoms went away. I remember at that time reading about not using copper pipes, etc, and you are right, that copper cooking pots are lined (though copper candy pots are not).
Here is a comprehensive article about Copper Toxicity Syndrome, by Lawrence Wilson, MD. In it he explains how copper is required by the body for important functions, and how too much copper can be toxic. I personally wouldn’t use copper as a container for my everyday drinking water.
It’s important to know how pure the copper is. Impurities will be present in low-purity copper and are not an issue in high-purity copper.
It also depends on how you use your copper vessel. If you pour yourself a few cups of water and drink them without letting the water sit, the water has no time to absorb any measurable amount of copper. The longer the water sits, the more copper it will pick up.
There is not much published literature available on how much trace copper is deposited into water while it sits inside a copper vessel. The best figures I’ve come across point to about 10 to 20 parts per billion per hour, which works out to 1-2% of the FDA’s RDA of copper.
Here safe limit is 1mg per liter from copper pipes but in reality its 0.2mg here. And in usa they sat the limit to 10mg per day as safe for humans. supplements has 1mg in it here.
But if you drink more than 5 litre probably it will flush out most minerals including the copper.
It would be interesting to know how much copper is realased over night in a copperbottle. i dont think its dangoerus but when having copper pipes eating foods containing it and so on it could sum up to be too much.
Drinking from copper should be a therapy and not an everyday usage.